sometimes when lydia wants to answer a question, she

Poem

By Lydia Rae Bush

When I was three, I wanted the colorful, fun-shaped

cereal with the kids' commercial, but my mom said,

you won't like that, and I said, I will, so she said, fine,

and she got it, but I didn't like it.

And when I was three, I skipped down a path after soccer

practice saying I was glad my shirt had the

number three on it, but come to think of it,

I think my brother had said it first.

When I was three, I sat in a three-tier closet,

and I don't know, man, that's about it. I just sat there.

I smiled and I said I liked it. It was my brother's.

It was the best, but it was also our favorite.

When I was three, gosh, there are actually a lot of these. There

was a dirt pile, and I sat in a wagon, and I got in trouble for visiting

a neighbor's dog, and, actually, I mean, anyways, there was, but

what I meant to say was, when I was three, I wished video game

characters a happy birthday. When I was four, a teacher told me

that I'd been abandoned, and that it was my job to fix it, but no

one explained how, and I tried, but it didn't work, and it's,

um, it's not my earliest childhood memory but it's the biggest.

---

Lydia Rae Bush is a poet exploring themes of embodiment and social-emotional development. Rae’s work is Best of the Net nominated and appears in publications such as Vocivia Magazine, Corporeal, and Sage Cigarettes Magazine. When not writing, Lydia can be found singing and dancing, especially in bed when she is supposed to be going to sleep. Lydia’s chapbook Free Bleeding is forthcoming with dogleech books.